We are not very good at this. Our success rests on our international experience and on our ability to read the market. And I contest the notion that you can only succeed in China when you are well-connected. Neither my husband nor I are "princelings" - children of influential people, that is. And yet China has enabled us to succeed.

But it is a worry that there have been so many delays in the reform of China's state-owned enterprises. We all know that private companies are run more efficiently than state ones. These reforms are very much anticipated for the potential dynamism they could create.

Because people along the route had realized that there was demand and quickly organized supply. That's so Chinese. In a well-organized country like Germany, such a problem may not have arisen in the first place, but in China people immediately recognized an opportunity.

Many Chinese entrepreneurs are now donating for education; others support foundations in health care and research. None of us wants to be the richest guy in the cemetery.

I'm afraid what we are building today will not have the same impact and sustainability of the architecture of a 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago. The buildings of those days were miracles. We don't perform such miracles today. So we should be a little more modest. For my part, I'll be glad to show one of my buildings one day to my grandchildren and say: I'm proud of that.

I used to ask myself why American universities are financed through endowments. Now I know: During the early days of America, the state was poor and when citizens wanted to set something up, they needed to collect money themselves. Historically, this was different in Europe. There used to be a strong state, a monarch or a king. He provided money.

China reformed its state sector before, in the late 1990s. Tens of millions were laid off at the time. That was scary and we had warnings of social unrest. But it did not happen. Instead, there was a restructuring in our economic system. I am not sure if China will follow a Western playbook in this respect.